This thesis takes up what is perceived by the author to be a lacuna in Edward W. Said's (1978) study, Orientalism. It is argued that so over-determined is Said's focus on the political, aesthetic and intellectual Western 'Orientalising' of the Arab-Islamic Middle East and North Africa that specific attention is insufficiently directed to the case of the principal imperial state in the region, the Ottoman Empire and its successor, the Turkish Republic. The study begins by exploring the work of Said's principle theoretical source, Michel Foucault specifically as it pertains to the history of the formation of subjectivities in those territories now understood to include 'Europe' and 'the West' and the particular implications for the formulation of representations of those regions understood to constitute the, principally Islamic, Orient. The study then reengages with Said's critique of Oriental ism, and associated literature, in close parallel with Foucault's history of the epistemic formulation of 'Western' subjectivities. A further narrowing of focus then occurs with a discursive history of Western representations of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic within the framework provided by the earlier analyses of Foucault and Said's writing. It is argued that a unidirectional Western discursive formation vis-a-vis the Ottoman and Turkish milieus has not been in evidence. Finally, a Foucauldian discourse analysis of contemporary UK newspaper and commercial tourism texts that take Turkey as their ostensible object is conducted, suggesting the existence of a contemporary discursive formation that renders Turkey and the Ottoman past as an abstract device for the valorization of 'Western' and 'European' subjectivities. It is further argued that a disavowal of the constitutive presence of an Ottoman Turkish 'Europeanness' is necessary to maintain the ontological stability of that Western subj ectivity.

Drawing on a selection of renowned literary and cinematic works, this study seeks to explain the ways in which literature and film have searched through narrative to make sense of the traumatic events of the German past. In the aftermath of those events, a surprising delay in the treatment of history took place during the 1950s which is explained both within the socio-political context of the restoration and as a consequence of the extreme difficulties, identified by Theodor Adorno, which obstruct any artistic treatment of those atrocities encapsulated in the term "Auschwitz". Only in response to critical socio-political moments in postwar German history were works produced which attempted to deal with the theme. The thesis examines the various forms these narratives took and identifies how the stories and models of the past produced by writers and film makers in their attempts to narrate history gravitate between two poles: the one characterised by a desire to articulate memories of everyday life during the period of the Third Reich, the other determined by a need to show patterns of history through uncovering the workings of a system. To begin with, writers with a clear literary commitment were propelled through socio-political events into confronting, by means of their own distinctive stories and models, well established versions of the past which had been motivated by the desire to evade or impose particular ideological interpretations. Notwithstanding their achievements, these writers, because they chose to remain within traditional literary parameters, side-stepped key elements of the past which cried out for treatment.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.